Workleap - Martyn Bassett Associates

With an ever-growing customer base, Workleap needed a Director-level product hire who could take ownership of 0 - 1 initiatives.

The Timeline

Number of days to the first round of resumes: 6
Number of candidates considered: 10
Number of candidates interviewed: 5
Number of business days to complete the search: 43

The Search

Our client was looking to add a brand new Director of Product Management to their employee engagement SaaS platform team.

This role had full ownership of the roadmap for their suite of performance management SaaS platforms, with a strong focus on 0 – 1 activities. Our client was gearing up for a big launch in 2023, and this hire’s focus was the go-to-market activities for two net new products.

The Client

Workleap is a true Canadian success story, founded by three university friends who bootstrapped their B2B SaaS business. Fast forward 15 years to a profitable business with an ARR of $100M! The business is cash flow positive, profitable, and employs a team of 400+.

Today, Workleap provides employee engagement, productivity, collaboration, and onboarding solutions to over 15,000 customers globally.

Search Requirements

This hire was part of a broader mandate to bring more structure to Workleap’s Product organization. Their customer base had exploded, and this hire was part of a plan to switch to Product-Led Growth strategies.

With the employee engagement and performance management suite being a central focus, they needed a Director-level hire who could take ownership of all 0 – 1 initiatives leading up to a busy release calendar in 2023.

The main requirement was to find someone with a pedigree within B2B enterprise grade SaaS, dealing with a non-technical user persona. In addition, this hire needed extensive new product development and launch experience and the ability to scale their product team by 2x in a short period.

The Hire

This hire had 8 years of product management experience, having previously been a Head of Product for an employee engagement and wellness analytics startup.

There they managed a team of 6 (Product Managers, Designers, and Data Scientists) and were responsible for bringing V1 to market and growing it from 0 to 60 enterprise customers – representing 1.5M end users and an ARR of $5M.

Previously, they held progressive responsibilities at a leading global financial institution in marketing automation, digital strategy, growth marketing, and global customer experience as a Senior Product Manager.

“We always appreciate working with Andrew, Heidi and the team at Martyn Bassett Associates. We’ve worked with them on several searches to fill critical roles in our product teams and they have consistently delivered outstanding talent. They were quick to understand our specific needs and were able to hit the ground running.

It’s clear that the team has a very solid understanding of the Product function as well as established relationships with key talent in the industry. Always a pleasure working with you and looking forward to our continued collaboration.”

–– Jonathan Berlinski, Director Talent Acquisition

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